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2.20.2012

i heart charts

today is the last day of the first installment of the FULLfillment project! HOO-fucking-RAY!

I don't know about y'all, but I am sooooooooooooooooooooooooo tired of thinking about this month's topic, and I am sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ready to move on to the next month's topic (which is all about making art, by the way.)

Before we can do that, however, you may recall that I promised you some outcomes. At the close of each installment I will report on the data I've collected and then skew that data to make it reflect my agenda (because that's what research is all about right?).

If you've spent any time in the sidebar you may have noticed a few things and I'm going to touch on a few of them now in the order they appear.

1. Under "Important Stuff": the conscious choice log. So, the idea behind this is that I'm carrying around this little bound journal with me and my intent was that every time I needed to make a choice about something related to this month's theme (my body: so in this case, food, sleep, activity, rest, etc.) I would CHOOSE my action by committing to it in writing and then come back to report on the benefits or consequences of the choice. The point of this was to remain aware of my choices and not just let things happen to me... Of the 29 days in this first installment of the FP I used the conscious choice log exactly once. Yep, once. The choice I logged was to eat potato chips... and the results were that I had a grumbly stomach, felt tired, and had a headache later...

Here's a very impressive graph highlighting this amazing feat:

i know. just take it in.

we're going to go ahead and try this concept again...

2. a little further down under "my best self is" you'll find a list of the things I feel when I feel well. This list was compiled over the course of a few days when I was feeling great. I'm not sure the words I've chosen for these feelings will make sense out of the context of my head, so I've included my personal definitions.

airy-fairy--in touch with my spiritual self and ideas that are bigger than myself.

conscious--of my needs and values and my actions directly relate to those values.

decisive--i know what i want and what i don't.

inspired--ideas flow endlessly.

interested--in the world, the way things look, feel, smell, taste, and sound.

light--a little floaty feeling. yeah, really.

organized--my thoughts, spaces, and plans come together beautifully in my head and/or on paper.

I've tracked the occurrences of these feelings daily, and if I experience one of them at least once I chart it. Feel free to give me feedback about the psychometrics about my data collection and reporting methods, I don't really know what I'm doing here I'm just pretending to.

So, I added up how many of these 12 feelings I experienced on a daily basis between 1/23 and 2/20 and here's what I came up with:

holy shit

And when I saw this I thought to myself... Um... wow. Well, this explains why it feels so overwhelming to be me. I thought adding a trendline would make it feel better, but even the slightly upward trend of the month is tremendously unimpressive.

In an attempt to make myself feel better I also created this (an accounting of how many times I felt each of the "best self" qualifiers):

it's colorful. that must mean it's good.

and really, if I was feeling appreciative 19 out of 29 days in a month, it was a good month.

3. Finally... what you've all been waiting for... what my ass looks like now! You'll notice way down at the bottom of the sidebar (just below where I beg you to "like" me on Facebook, which you should really do if you haven't already) you'll see my "obligatory before picture." I picked the ugliest sweatpants I owned and the most unflattering angle I could think of and immortalized the moment digitally... and one month later, and 20 pounds lighter, I donned the same pants and took the same picture (except it involved a mirror and self portraiture this time because the only other person who lives here is four) and here are the grand results:

sorry it's blurry.

For comparison, go ahead and check out the pictures in the sidebar... but if you're too lazy to do so I'll just go ahead and tell you. This is a MAJOR improvement. I still don't think this look is public-worthy (except maybe at Wal-Mart, but I don't go to Wal-Mart), but if I've given myself a year to look hot in sweats and this is where we are 1/12th of the way in... I'm happy with our progress.

Now, of course... and I hope everyone knows this by now: this really has nothing to do with sweatpants or my ass. I mean, it does in that a hot ass is a measurable outcome and my hypothesis is that my ass-hotness will be a reflection of my self love because my ass-not-hotness was a reflection of my self destruction... and that's what this is about. A year to learn to love myself. A year to learn how to stop hurting myself. A year to focus on me, and not only what I want, but also what I need, and what is best for me.